Frequency of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates from Clinical Specimens in Gondar University Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia

The development of resistance to multiple antibiotics and control of disease transmission by MRSA isolates in hospitals/communities have been recognized as the major challenges as the bacterial population that expresses the resistance phenotype varies according to the environmental conditions. This study was conducted to determine the magnitude of MRSA strain and to investigate the in vitro antimicrobial susceptibility pattern and βlactamase production of strains isolated from clinical specimens. Total of 1,295 clinical specimens including: pus, wound swab and discharge and body fluids were collected from patients presenting with infection. The presence of Staphylococcus aureus was detected using conventional microbiological methods. Isolated S. aureus were further subjected to MRSA screening and subsequently the antibiotic susceptibility test was performed. The data were entered and analyzed using SPSS. Of the total 279 S. aureus isolates during the study period (21.5%), 49 (17.6%) were found to be MRSA. Most of MRSA were isolated from wound swab and discharge and from inpatient. All MRSA strains recorded susceptibility to vancomycin, flucloxacillin, cefadroxil and cefoxitin, which was followed by 95.9% to clindamycin. In contrast, all strains of MRSA were found to be resistance to penicillin and 78.7% of them were found to be multidrug resistant. Both β-lactamase productions were detected in all S. auresus irrespective of methicillin-resistant. According to this study, vancomycin, flucloxacillin, cefadroxil and cefoxitin seems to be most effective antimicrobial agents which shows 100% sensitivity even with multi-drug resistance.